LCCC Academy August 2020 Overview

3 New Recruits

August has been a fantastic month for junior cricket. We have had reasonable weather until the last few weeks, good pitches and lots of matchplay opportunities for young cricketers to learn. The under 18s have had numerous games versus Northants, which have resulted in a win, a loss and a rained off T20 game. Fundamentally at the age group levels, winning is not the main priority, teaching people how to make match winning contributions is however crucial. 

In most of these games we have had members of the professional staff playing for match practice. This is always a fantastic learning opportunity for young cricketers, to see how professional players go about their business. In the most recent 50 over game against Northants, Hassan Azad, Sam Evans, Alex Evans and Nat Bowley all played.

The most pleasing aspect of this game for me was that we won the game largely thanks to contributions from Leicestershire’s next generation rather than these pros. Hassan and Sam both scored 30 each but it was a fantastic 120 not out from Dylan Church that was the significant match winning innings that we are after from our Academy players.

The innings had all of the things that we encourage from our batsmen here at Leicestershire. It had aggression and the constant desire to keep the scoreboard moving, it had patience and control through more difficult periods, fantastic energetic running between the wickets which put the opposition under constant pressure and it had the hunger and responsibility to bat throughout the innings and not leave the job unfinished for another batsmen.

Prior to this innings I had offered Dylan and two other players a place on our Academy for the remainder of the season and 2021. The ECB and PCA had for the 2020 season placed a cap on academy age groups at under 18, meaning that under 19 cricketers were no longer eligible for County Academies. With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, it was clear that cricketers were going to miss out on a year’s development and therefore a decision was made to allow this age cap to be moved to under 19 for the 2021 season. This gave these three lads an opportunity to pursue their dream of being a first-class cricketer for a while longer.